NASA Europa Mission May Not Launch Until Late 2020s

NASA's highly anticipated mission to the potentially life-supporting Jupiter moon Europa may not get off the ground until the late 2020s, agency officials say. Last year, Congress granted NASA $175 million to continue developing its Europa mission, which will perform dozens of flybys to gauge the life-hosting potential of the icy moon's huge subsurface ocean. In that allocation, Congress declared that NASA must have the Europa mission ready to launch by 2022.